NBA Cup 2026 Explained: How the Groups, Tiebreakers and Knockouts Work
Here’s a strange thing about the NBA in November: some regular-season games are also part of a separate tournament with its own trophy. Same court, same players, two competitions at once. If that sounds confusing, it is, a little. This guide untangles it.
The NBA Cup is a mid-season tournament that’s now in its fourth edition. Its group play is running right now and finishes on 27 November, and the knockout rounds follow in December. Below, I explain who plays whom, how teams reach the knockouts, how ties are broken, which games count for the regular season, and what changed this year. It draws on the league’s own explainer (updated in August 2026), plus ESPN and Sports Illustrated. I leave out scores, standings and team names, because they change every few days, and I flag where the sources differ. This is a plain explainer and not betting advice.
The Short Version
Thirty teams. Six groups of five. Each team plays the other four teams in its group once, two at home and two away. The six group winners advance, plus two wild cards, which makes eight teams for the knockout rounds. Everything after that is single elimination.
Those are the league’s own words, in essence. Here’s the calendar it gives:
- Group play: from Friday 30 October to Friday 27 November, with “Cup Nights” every Friday, plus extra nights on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 November.
- Quarter-finals: Friday 4 and Saturday 5 December.
- Semi-finals: Tuesday 8 and/or Wednesday 9 December.
- Final: Friday 11 December at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
As I write on 11 November, there are about two and a half weeks of group play still to go.
One useful detail from the league’s page: on Cup Nights, the only NBA games played are group games. So if a Friday in November looks like a full slate, those are the games that carry the tournament with them. The page also says 15 of the group games are national broadcast games spread across three services, and that knockout games stream on one of them. Broadcast rights differ by country, so check your local listings.
Three editions, three different winners
According to Sports Illustrated, the first three champions were all different teams, in 2023, 2024 and 2025. I won’t name them, because the list isn’t what matters here. What matters is that nobody has repeated yet, which is a fact worth knowing if you hear a team described as “the Cup favourite.” That’s my observation from SI’s list, not a prediction.
Who’s in which group?
The groups were drawn from pots based on last season’s records, so each group got one team from each pot. Three groups are in the Western Conference and three in the Eastern, which means teams only meet opponents from their own conference in the group stage. The official page lists the groups, and I’d link to it rather than copy them here, since a typo in a team list is easy to make.
How a Team Gets Out of the Group
This is the part most casual fans miss, because the rules are not the same as in a normal league table.
Win the group, or be the best runner-up
The six group winners go through. Then each conference gets one wild card: the second-place team with the best record in that conference. So eight teams advance in total.
ESPN’s explainer describes this a little differently, saying the winner of each group plus “the team with the best record among the non-group winners” advances. That reads like one wild card, not two, and it doesn’t add up to eight. The league’s page and Sports Illustrated both say two wild cards, one per conference, so I’m going with that. It’s worth knowing the wording isn’t consistent across articles.
The tiebreakers, in order
Five teams, four games each: ties are likely. The league’s page lists the tiebreakers in this order:
- Head-to-head record in group play.
- Point differential in group play.
- Total points scored in group play.
- Last season’s regular-season record.
- A random drawing.
Wild-card ties use the same steps, except head-to-head isn’t used. Ties inside a group are settled first, before the wild-card comparison.
The overtime rule
This is new and easy to miss. The league’s page says overtime scoring is excluded from both the point-differential and total-points tiebreakers. A game that goes to overtime counts as a zero point differential for both teams. Sports Illustrated reports the same rule.
Why margin matters
Because point differential is the second tiebreaker, a big win can matter more than it would in an ordinary game. Sports Illustrated puts it this way: “A 20-point win is a lot more valuable than a one-point win.” That’s a quote from the article and a sensible reading of the rules, not a guarantee of how any team will behave.
[YOUR NOTE: one or two lines about how you follow the NBA, or the first time a tournament game made you care about a regular-season night. Keep it honest and short.]
Do These Games Count for the Regular Season?
Mostly, yes, with one exception, and the sources aren’t perfectly tidy about the numbers.
What the league says
The league’s page says that group play and the quarter-finals and semi-finals all count as regular-season games. The championship game doesn’t count toward a team’s regular-season record or statistics. Each team still plays 82 regular-season games. The Cup nights are part of those 82, not extra games on top.
A small numbers wrinkle
The page also says “All 67 games across both stages” count toward the standings, and in the same section says the final doesn’t. Let me do the sum. Six groups of five teams, each group playing 10 games, is 60 group games. Add four quarter-finals and two semi-finals, which makes 66. Add the final, and you get 67. So by my arithmetic, 66 games count and the 67th, the final, doesn’t. I’d read the “67” as the total number of Cup games. This is my own arithmetic, so check it against the official page.
The games for teams that go out
Not every team advances, and the league has plans for those that don’t. The page says the 22 teams that miss the knockouts each play two more regular-season games in a window around 6–10 December, including two cross-conference games between bottom-finishing teams, subject to travel limits. The four quarter-final losers in each conference play each other in a regular-season game around 7, 9 or 10 December. Sports Illustrated’s version is worded a little differently, so treat this as the league’s plan as of August, and check the live schedule.
What’s Different This Year
Three changes stand out.
Semi-finals at home arenas
In earlier editions the semi-finals and final were played at a neutral site in Las Vegas. This year, the league’s page says the quarter-finals and semi-finals are played at the higher seed’s home arena, and the final is on 11 December in Indianapolis. Sports Illustrated says the Las Vegas games “lacked the buzz and attendance” the league wanted. That’s the magazine’s view, and I haven’t seen the league say it.
A smaller venue for the final
Hinkle Fieldhouse is a college basketball arena. Sports Illustrated says it seats 9,100. I haven’t confirmed that from the venue, and ESPN calls it “storied.” ESPN also says no venue for next year has been announced.
The overtime change
As above, overtime no longer counts toward point differential. It’s a small rule, but it changes how a tied-up game feels when the clock runs out.
What about the money?
The league’s page gives no prize amounts. It says the prize pool goes to players on teams that reach the knockout rounds, with more money the further a team goes. Sports Illustrated says the 2026 amounts haven’t been announced, and quotes last year’s figures, including $530,933 for the title. ESPN quotes figures from the first edition. Because the two articles use different years, I won’t give a number as current, and I’d treat any figure with care until the league publishes one.
Awards along the way
The league’s page also says a media panel picks a Cup MVP and an All-Tournament Team, based on both group play and the knockout rounds. That’s a useful detail for anyone who thinks the Cup is only about the trophy: a player on a team that goes out in the quarter-finals can still be recognised.
Who hosts the quarter-finals?
The page says the quarter-finals are played at the higher seed’s home arena, and that the teams with the best group-play records host. It also says the best-record team hosts the wild-card team. I haven’t seen the full seeding rules laid out in a way I can check, so I’d wait until the groups finish and the league publishes the bracket before saying who plays where. For the semi-finals, the page says ties for the higher seed are settled with the same tiebreakers as in the groups.
How to Follow It Without Losing Your Mind
These are my own suggestions, built from the sources.
- Look at the groups, not the whole league table. A team can be 3–1 in its group and still not be safe, because of tiebreakers.
- Watch the margin in group games. With point differential as the second tiebreaker, a late bucket to cut a loss from eight to five can matter.
- Remember the wild card. A second-place team isn’t out. In each conference, the best runner-up goes through.
- Don’t expect the final to look like any other game. It doesn’t count toward the regular season, and it’s played at a smaller venue than the arenas used for the earlier rounds.
- Check the live schedule. The league sent out only part of the schedule at first, ESPN reports, so some dates might still be filled in or moved.
What I couldn’t confirm
I haven’t read the league’s full rulebook, only its explainer, and I haven’t verified how many seats Hinkle Fieldhouse has. I haven’t covered broadcast arrangements beyond the one line above, which vary by country, so check your local listings. I also haven’t given results to date, since they change by the day, and I haven’t covered how the Cup affects the playoffs or seeding, because the sources I read don’t say.
A short wrap-up
The NBA Cup looks complicated, but the logic is simple: four group games, win your group or be the best runner-up, and then it’s single elimination. Keep an eye on the margins, because they might decide who goes through.
